A Pagan Invocation

In the Town of Greece vs. Galloway decision, the Supreme Court allowed religious invocations at the start of government meetings, but only so long as the content of those invocations did not discriminate against minority religions. Recently a Florida Pagan named David Suhor was selected to give the invocation at the Board of County Commissioners for Escambia County, and he chose to perform what may be the best Calling of the Quarters that I've ever heard, shown in the video above.

Here’s the first stanza of his lovely song (the rest of the lyrics are in the YouTube video description):

     Hail, Guardians of the Watchtowers of the East,
     Powers of Air! We invoke. and call you
     Golden Eagle of the Dawn, Star-seeker, Whirlwind
     Rising Sun! Come!
     By the air that is Her breath,
     Send forth your light, Be here now!

Oh my god, I love it. This is what the Supreme Court decision has wrought.

But as the Patheos article goes on to report, not everyone was pleased with Suhar's beautiful invocation.

One of the commissioners wasn’t happy about it at all.

Wilson Robertson, a Christian, walked out before Suhor even began, telling a reporter, “I’m just not going to have a pagan or satanic minister pray for me.”

Welcome to our world, Robertson!

Suhor’s reason for delivering that particular invocation was brilliant:

“In a way I would like for other people to experience what it’s like when I go to a meeting and am asked to pray against my conscience.”

Suhar went on to explain that he actually does not support religious invocations to open meetings, and would instead prefer a nonsectarian moment of silence. But I disagree. I don't think that religious expressions need to be driven from the public square, and furthermore allowing those of all traditions to deliver invocations like this helps to remind everyone that we live in a pluralistic society that includes many different faiths - so long as it can be handled in a non-discriminatory way.

There are always going to be a few stick-in-the-mud jerks like Robertson, but I also can't help wondering if at least a few the folks present might have thought, "Hey, that was pretty cool. Maybe these Pagans aren't so sinister after all." And I have to say, I would love to go up there as a Thelemite and open one of these with an impassioned reading of Liber Israfel.

Hacking the Solar Hexagram

One of the more bothersome techniques in Golden Dawn and Thelemic magick is the tracing of the solar hexagram in the Greater Ritual of the Hexagram. Aside from the Sun, the other six classical planets use a simple, straightforward method. To trace the proper figure, you map the hexagram onto the Tree of Life and start at the point corresponding to the sephira attributed to the planet, as shown on the hexagram above. Then, you trace clockwise to invoke or counter-clockwise to banish, tracing first one triangle and then its complement to form the complete shape.

Solve et Coagula has a more comprehensive article on the hexagram rituals here. From that article, this image shows how to trace the Hexagram of Mercury. The point for Mercury is on the lower left, corresponding to the sephira Hod. You start at that point to trace the first triangle, and then start at the opposite point (Jupiter in this case) to trace the second.

This method is simple and effective, but as you can see from the top diagram, the Sun presents a problem. As it sits in the center of the shape, none of the points of the hexagram are associated with it. So the solution that was arrived at by Golden Dawn magicians was to trace all six of the other hexagrams, starting with Saturn and working down the Tree of Life to the Moon. It is therefore drawn as shown in the image below, from the same Solve et Coagula article as the Mercury hexagram.

No, THIS is the Saddest Harry Potter Ever

Back in 2002 a Chinese author came up with one of the most amazing ripoffs of all time. Amidst the media hype surrounding the Harry Potter books, the author decided to write his or her own - and by write I mean steal. The book consisted of the entire text of J. R. R. Tolkein's The Hobbit, with the character names changed to those of Harry and his friends. The author also added a short first chapter in which a spell changes Harry into a hobbit, and a concluding chapter in which he is changed back.

When I wrote about this amazing piece of work (pun intended) back in 2008 I described it as the saddest Harry Potter ever, but it seems that I spoke too soon. Jezebel has an article up about a Christian mom who decided to "fix" the Harry Potter series by rewriting the books from an extreme fundamentalist perspective. That is, she took out all the magical wizarding stuff and replaced it with "prayer and miracles."

A writer who claims to be an Evangelical stay-at-home mom named Grace Ann has taken it upon herself to remove all the witchcraft devil-worship from Harry Potter and replace it with a more Christian-friendly message. Looks like someone has finally thought of the children — by stripping a children's book of the very thing that makes it fun to read.

"I'm new to this whole fanfiction thing, but recently, I've encountered a problem that I believe this is the solution to," Grace Ann wrote on FanFiction.net. "My little ones have been asking to read the Harry Potter books and of course I'm happy for them to be reading, but I don't want them turning into witches! So I thought 'Why not make some slight changes so these books are family friendly?' And then I thought 'Why not share this with all the other mommies who are facing the same problem?' So-Ta da! Here it is! I am SO excited to share this with all of you!"

Weird Things Happen to Skeptics, Too

Michael Shermer is well-known skeptic who has written extensively on debunking all manner of alleged paranormal phenomena, from bigfoot to UFO's to psychic abilities. But as he explains in this article from Scientific American, he recently witnessed an event that appeared to be of paranormal origin - or at least something he could not explain away.

The event in question happened on the day of Shermer's wedding, this last June. Growing up in Germany, his wife Jennifer had been close to her grandfather but he passed away when she was sixteen. One of the items of his still in her possession was an old transistor radio that did not seem to work, despite Shermer's best efforts to repair it. He finally gave up and put the radio away in a desk drawer.

Being 9,000 kilometers from family, friends and home, Jennifer was feeling amiss and lonely. She wished her grandfather were there to give her away. She whispered that she wanted to say something to me alone, so we excused ourselves to the back of the house where we could hear music playing in the bedroom. We don't have a music system there, so we searched for laptops and iPhones and even opened the back door to check if the neighbors were playing music. We followed the sound to the printer on the desk, wondering—absurdly—if this combined printer/scanner/fax machine also included a radio. Nope.

At that moment Jennifer shot me a look I haven't seen since the supernatural thriller The Exorcist startled audiences. “That can't be what I think it is, can it?” she said. She opened the desk drawer and pulled out her grandfather's transistor radio, out of which a romantic love song wafted. We sat in stunned silence for minutes. “My grandfather is here with us,” Jennifer said, tearfully. “I'm not alone.”

Shortly thereafter we returned to our guests with the radio playing as I recounted the backstory. My daughter, Devin, who came out of her bedroom just before the ceremony began, added, “I heard the music coming from your room just as you were about to start.” The odd thing is that we were there getting ready just minutes before that time, sans music. Later that night we fell asleep to the sound of classical music emanating from Walter's radio. Fittingly, it stopped working the next day and has remained silent ever since.

More Poor Oppressed Christian Hypocrisy

I know, this is a subject that I keep bringing up. But you know what? There are apparently still people out there who think that the Poor Oppressed Christians are just asking to be left alone and trying to protect religious rights for everyone. However, as their actions and public statements show, this is not at all the case.

Alternet has an article up today about how stunts by groups like The Satanic Temple clearly demonstrate that the "religious freedom" these Christians are talking about is just for them. This "freedom" also apparently includes securing them the right to impose their beliefs on others, and asserts that even mild disagreement somehow constitutes persecution. Frankly, comparing that sort of "persecution" to what is faced by Christians in some parts of the world strikes me as pretty offensive.

Now from a spiritual perspective I will admit that I find "performance artist" Satanists kind of silly. But generally speaking, they are not theists and find the spiritual angle irrelevant. Furthermore, from the standpoint of politics they are clearly on the side of minority religions, particularly those that the Poor Oppressed Christians find offensive. They also happen to be quite funny, especially in terms of the reactions that they provoke.

For example, recently one of these groups in Oklahoma City (not The Satanic Temple, which is involved in the Oklahoma monument controversy, but which distanced itself from this event) planned a "black mass" that turned out to be a ridiculous mess that was only attended by about forty people. While I would have been embarrassed to be involved with such a poor ritual, the media response made it totally worthwhile.

Ebola Zombies

Could the zombie apocalypse be underway in Africa? According to this story from Liberia, two victims of the ongoing Ebola outbreak died and then came back to life. There's nothing in the article about rotting flesh, infectious bites, or a mindless, all-consuming hunger for fresh brains, but the tale is creepy nonetheless.

Two Ebola patients, who died of the virus in separate communities in Nimba County have reportedly resurrected in the county.

The victims, both females, believed to be in their 60s and 40s respectively, died of the Ebola virus recently in Hope Village Community and the Catholic Community in Ganta, Nimba. But to the amazement of residents and onlookers on Monday, the deceased reportedly regained life in total disbelief.

The New Dawn Nimba County correspondent said the late Dorris Quoi of Hope Village Community and the second victim only identified as Ma Kebeh, said to be in her late 60s, were about to be taken for burial when they resurrected.

The reality here is that Ebola is not always fatal, and people do sometimes recover after being near death for some time. Odds are that the two women's vital signs had declined to the point where they appeared to be dead before finally overcoming the disease and reviving.

Still, even without the zombie angle it's plenty creepy to consider that these two victims were almost buried alive. Clearly the doctors who declared these two dead need to do a better job of assessing their patients.

"What's 'Oops?' Don't Say 'Oops!'"

Here's how not to go about securing your reputation as a miracle worker. Last week a Pakistani Sufi holy man (called a pir) claimed that he could resurrect a dead man. One of his followers volunteered to be killed and raised from the dead. Remarkably, the holy man proceeded to do just that - except the "resurrection" part didn't go as planned. The would-be miracle worker was arrested by police, and now faces murder charges.

A Saddar police spokesman said Muhammad Sabir, a pir of village Mubarakabad in Bahawalnagar, gained popularity over the last five years for his ability to perform ‘miracles’. He said on Tuesday, he announced that he could breathe life back into a dead man. The pir gave the condition that the victim must be married and have children. Sabir said 40-year-old Muhammad Niaz, a daily wage worker and father of six children, volunteered for the miracle.

On Wednesday, Niaz was placed on a table in a square and his hands and legs were bound. The police spokesman said Sabir then sliced his throat as people looked on. Meanwhile, an anonymous caller informed the police about ‘the miracle.’ The spokesman by the time police reached, Niaz had died. Witnesses said Sabir uttered some words to bring him back to life. They said when he realized his ‘miracle’ had not worked, he tried to flee.

Now if I wanted to kill someone with the intention of bringing them back, cutting their throat is the last way I would do it. The problems are (1) magick can't create blood out of nowhere, and (2) even if it could, the new blood would immediately drain out of the body and the resurrected subject would die all over again. I would want to go with some sort of asphyxiation, like smothering or drowning. That way, if the body can be restarted, there are no wounds that need to be sealed. Then I could use my magical powers in conjunction with my Red Cross CPR training to revive them.

For bonus miracle points, if the subject were killed by prolonged immersion in very cold water I might even be able to revive them a half an hour or so later. Granted, a doctor could do the same, and I wonder if the ancient idea of "breathing life" into a person comes from a much earlier culture working out the basics of CPR and passing it along as "esoteric wisdom." After all, the method is fairly intuitive - when someone isn't breathing, breathe for them - and you really can revive someone from clinical death that way. They just can't have been dead for very long.

Cracking Down on "Irregular Exorcisms"

The practice of exorcism is on the rise. In May, the Roman Catholic Church held a conference to train 250 new exorcists. According to organizers, more exorcists are needed because of the rise of atheism and secular humanism, which by some poorly articulated and utterly implausible mechanism leads to more people dabbling with the occult. But more exorcists means more exorcisms, and that brings its own set of problems.

Cardinal Giuseppe Betori, the Archbishop of Florence, recently delivered a missive to the priests of Tuscany reminding them of the strict procedures that exorcists are required to follow. According to church policy, before an exorcism can be performed the subject must pass a complex series of tests designed to exclude mental illness or any other mundane explanation for their symptoms. Apparently, some priests in the region have been disregarding this rule.

Around 15 official exorcisms have been conducted in Tuscany in recent years, according to the local press. However, dozens more have been performed without the say-so of church authorities, and the number of cases is increasing, prompting Cardinal Betori and the regional Bishops Conference to write to priests reminding them of their obligations.

The missive included the 20-year-old pastoral guidelines on dealing with demons and black magic, entitled “Regarding magic and demonology”, and called on priests to pay heed to the section headed “Exorcisms and healing prayers… pastoral rules and recommendations”.

A diocesan source quoted by La Nazione newspaper said: “Some priests, with the best intentions, are making themselves available to listen to these people and sometimes perform exorcisms on them in a way that is not permitted, not regular and not co-ordinated.”

Italy’s brutal and lingering recession has been blamed for a rise in mental health problems, which, the report says, might be confused with possession by some people.

Adherence to these protocols should be very important to representatives of the church, since they constitute the main difference between Roman Catholic exorcists and fly-by-night "demon busters" like the Teen Exorcist Squad who will, for example, happily conduct exorcisms over Skype at the drop of a hat - and, of course, for a "suggested donation."

I personally work with spirits and don't consider exorcism nonsense - it's one of the last remnants of real ceremonial magick left in the Christian tradition, and the practice of exorcism has a history that predates the Christian religion. However, genuine unwanted spiritual possession is rare, and mental illness is far more common. Hopefully exorcists will heed this missive and save their methods for those who really require them.